HP Unveils New Cloud-Based Mobile Print Services

By Chris Preimesberger |
Posted 2010-04-21

HP Unveils New Cloud-Based Mobile Print Services

SAN
FRANCISCO-Hewlett-Packard, Research In Motion (maker
of BlackBerry connected devices), FedEx Office and Hilton Worldwide joined
forces April 21 to kick-start a new cloud-based service for mobile printing,
long a nagging problem for many traveling businesspeople.

As a result of this new initiative, BlackBerry users now can search for the
closest connected printer wherever it may be, use the HP cloud service on a
secure network to access it, and then make the printout.

Here's a scenario most businesspeople have faced at one time or another: You're
in an airport, restaurant, cab or some other location away from print services,
and you suddenly realize you need to print out a contract or other legal
document to physically hand to somebody.

E-mail-especially involving legal, financial or other sensitive documents-doesn't
hack it in this situation.

In view of the fact that most people don't carry portable printers, getting a
paper copy in this situation usually doesn't happen. But using the new
cloud-based system from HP called ePrint Enterprise, a person using a BlackBerry can
search for the nearest connected printer-wherever it may be located-enter a
security code, go to the printer and obtain the printout on demand in a matter
of minutes.

HP and its partners in this new endeavor-RIM, FedEx Office and Hilton Worldwide-are
building this new ecosystem.

If the user is anywhere near a Hilton hotel or any of its affiliates (which
include the Conrad Hotels, Waldorfs, Doubletrees, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inns
and Homewood Suites), or near one of the 1,800 FedEx Office retail locations in
the world, that print can be made immediately.

By the end of the year, all of the Hilton properties (about 500 already are set
up) and most of the FedEx Office locations will be connected for this kind of
mobile printing.

Business Takes Place
Everywhere

"It's simply a matter of being where business takes place, and it takes
place everywhere," Victor Garcia, CTO
for HP's Canadian operation, told eWEEK.

"The vision is for there to be printers available for this service within 1
mile of where anybody is located, at any given time. And they don't have to be
HP printers, either."

All the mobile print services will be handled through HP's own cloud-service
data centers, Jeff Bane, HP vice president of Worldwide MPS
Service Delivery, told eWEEK.

"It'll be a combination, actually. Some of the service [and data storage]
will be handled in our own data centers, and some will be handled on site [at
the user's location]," Bane said. The new cloud printing services can be
customized to dovetail with existing IT systems, he said.

Since all connected printers already have an IP address, HP has been slowly
building its own ecosystem of printers for about 15 years and intends to expose
as many of the publicly available printers as possible to the new ePrint
system.

The Vision: Printers Everywhere

The company envisions these connected printers to be set up and made
available 24/7 in specially built kiosks in addition to hotels, airports,
government buildings, Internet cafes, schools and numerous other locations.

ePrint Enterprise is only one
part of HP's Enterprise Production Print Solutions. This is a suite of options
that provide enterprises with several onsite, offsite and near-site production
print capabilities.

Bruce Dahlgren, HP's senior vice president of Managed Enterprise Solutions,
Imaging and Printing Group, reminisced a bit about the way document processing
used to be, putting these new cloud-based services into fresh perspective.

"Twenty years ago, we all used transparencies for presentations,"
Dahlgren said. "We all had to check our mailboxes and wait for information
to come to us, so we could do something with it. Then, when we did get
something important, we had to go and copy it and send it out to those who
needed to see it.

"We had to add scanners and fax machines and all kinds of other stuff. Now
that everything's digital, look at all the electricity we're saving and how
we're shrinking our carbon footprints. It's all good from that
perspective."

However, despite all the cutbacks in office equipment that the future holds, HP
will still be making money in another department: data storage.

"We may not be selling fax machines and scanners as much anymore, but
people still have to store all their data, and we're seeing huge gains in that
sector," Dahlgren said.